Alija Tabakovic

Alija (Rasim) Tabakovic

31.12.1945 – 26.06.1992.

Alija Tabakovic was born in 1945. in Visoko (north of Sarajevo). His family at that time was seeking refuge after escaping from Visegrad in 1943. The Tabakovic family originally from Drinsko, Visegrad – along with several thousand Bosnian Muslims hiked through the woods of Mount Sjemec and Romanija to Visoko to escape the Serb slaughter of Bosnian Muslims in Visegrad. From 1941. to 1943. Visegrad was a enclave poorly defended by Italian soldiers.

After the end of the war in 1946. the Tabakovic family returned to Visegrad where Alija’s father – Rasim effendi Tabakovic was the head imam at the Careva mosque in the town’s center. Alija got married and worked in Astra shoe shop. He was known and loved by many in Visegrad.

In May 1992. after Bosnianks were started being hunted down by Serb neighbours, Alija with several of his friends went into hiding. He was hiding along with his close friends and neighbours – Enes Dzaferovic aka Cipa and Rasim Omerovic.

He made his last telephone call to his sister Hafa Karcic in Visegrad on 26.06.1992., saying that not much time is left and that it was most probably the last call is was making – that the house where they were hiding was being surrounded by Serb soldiers.

His unidentified body was retrived in Slap, Zepa in 1992 by Visegrad refugees. He was identified by DNA analysis two years ago.

27 June 1992 – 27 June 2011. Nineteen years have gone by since the Bikavac fire, an event as Judge Patrick Robinson described it at the trial of Milan Lukić, ranking high in the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man and standing out in the history of a century marked by war and bloodshed for the viciousness of the incendiary attack, the obvious premeditation and calculation behind it, the callousness and brutality of the way the victims were herded into the house, trapped and locked into it so that they were helpless to escape the inferno that ensued, and the pain and suffering that was inflicted on the victims as they burned alive. Not to be forgotten hopefully in Lukić’s cell at Scheveningen, nor in all the comfier homes where Lukić’s associates and superiors live out the rest of their lives – mean and unworthy lives, to be sure, but lives not cut short like those of the elderly men, women, childrern and babies whose dying cries should echo in the ears of those responsible for the rest of their days.